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Monday, May 28, 2012

A Florida man is accused of using a rope to tie up his 4-year-old daughter so he could play video games.

The young girl told police that she was watching TV on May 17 when her father, Heath Howe, tied her up in the kitchen. She said Howe then began to play "bad guy" video games, according to WTSP.

The girl's mother and a friend found the girl tied up after they returned from a trip to the gym, Fox News reports. The mother's friend untied the child after the mother allegedly did nothing to help her.

A pregnant woman is expected to survive after being bound, kidnapped, set on fire and shot.

The 22-year-old unidentified woman was dropping off her ex-boyfriend, who is allegedly the father of her unborn child, at the home of his new girlfriend in Warren, Michigan on Saturday morning. Thegarage door suddenly closed, and an unknown attacker put a gun to her head and bound her hands, feet, mouth, and eyes with duct tape.

Police in a Mexico City suburb arrested a mother and several relatives Thursday for allegedly gouging out the eyes of her 5-year-old son in what authorities said appeared to have been a drug-fueled ritual.

The boy was taken to a hospital in Nezahualcoyotl, a part of Mexico state bordering Mexico City, in serious condition early Thursday and later transferred by helicopter to a more specialized facility in the capital, officials said.

Nezahualcoyotl spokesman Fernando Chavez said a passing police car was flagged down on the street by someone who reported the incident and when officers entered the home they found the mother in shock with the boy in her arms.

An Arkansas man assumed the boy wrapped in a blanket on his futon was his sleeping cousin. But hours later he realized it was a 14-year-old boy he didn't know who, police determined Thursday, had been shot while playing with a gun with a friend.

Little Rock police said the boy, TyJuan Woodard, died after he and a 13-year-old friend were playing with a gun that accidentally fired and shot him in the chest Wednesday. The younger boy had covered Woodard's body with a blanket, then left and spent the night elsewhere without telling anyone what happened, police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said.

First lady Michelle Obama wouldn't mind trading places with Beyonce, telling Peoplemagazine if she could be someone else, it'd be a great singer.

She also revealed President Barack Obama doesn't shy away from his duties as husband-in-chief -- he makes sure to tuck her into bed as part of a daily ritual.

"We have a ritual where he tucks me in, because I'm usually in bed before anybody," Obama said. "He'll come and turn the lights out and give me a kiss and we'll talk. He's like, 'Ready to be tucked?' I'm like, 'Yes I am.'"

Authorities say an upstate New York man using a samurai sword to fight with another man struck his 8-year-old son in the head.

Police in Utica tell local media outlets that 42-year-old Thar Kyi (ky) barged into the home where his three children were getting ready for school Tuesday morning and began swinging the sword at their mother's boyfriend.

A 13-year-old girl used Mother's Day to seek forgiveness, promise to behave and reassure her mom that she loved her. The handwritten card she gave her mother stood in stark contrast to what police said she did two weeks later.

The girl and two young friends were locked up in juvenile hall on charges of trying to murder the mother as she lay in bed.

"I don't know what to say. I just can't believe it," the mother told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Wednesday at her tiny mobile home.

Law enforcement officials now suspect the teens – two girls and a boy – had tried to kill the mother in three different ways, possibly because she was strict with a curfew and critical of the girl's friends.

"It was just because of problems at home," sheriff's Deputy Osvaldo Pelayes said.

The mother did not seek medical attention after the other attacks, said San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Rose, who declined to elaborate.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A group of six is behind bars after police say they bound their 41-year-old roommate's feet with tape, stapled his lips shut, and spent the night torturing him with a small power tool in theirUtah home near Salt Lake City.

Police believe the suspects were suspicious about their new roommate, who told authorities he'd moved into the house in Magna a week and a half earlier and had agreed to remodel the basement in exchange for rent.

"One of the suspect's claims over the last several weeks different people have pulled a gun on him in the street," Unified Police Lt. Justin Hoyal said. "They believe (the victim) was responsible for it."

Police officers told the paper that a 49-year-old mother enlisted three people -- her daughter, a young boy, and a 61-year-old woman -- to help her shoplift clothing and other items from an Old Navy in Troy, Mich.

Security camera footage showed the four entering the store shortly after 8 p.m. and then fanning out to different areas, where they proceeded to stuff items into various bags. Security guards were able to catch the 11-year-old girl and 61-year-old woman, but the girl's mother and the young boy got away, accordindag to the Detroit News.

Jonathan Hoffman frantically told a 911 dispatcher he had been shot in the chest by his grandmother and was going to die, a police detective testified Monday.

By the time officers arrived at the family's upscale condo in a Detroit suburb, at least four more shots from a .40-caliber handgun had been pumped into the 17-year-old high school senior.

A West Bloomfield Township detective told a judge during Monday's arraignment for 74-year-old Sandra Layne that eight entry and exit wounds were found in Hoffman's body after the Friday afternoon shooting.

Layne has been charged with open murder and held without bond. She stood mute in court when the charge was read, and a not guilty plea was entered on her behalf. An open murder charge allows a jury to decide on whether a first- or second-degree charge applies after hearing evidence.

This is hardly child's play: Randy Smith, 54, was reportedly found walking the streets of Fresno, Calif., Saturday night, carrying a Super Soaker that he had converted into a 20-gauge shotgun, according to KMPH.

Normally cops wouldn't raise an eyebrow at someone waltzing around town with one of a high-powered plastic water guns, but an uptick in toy-to-gun conversions made officers more suspicious of Smith.

They stopped him and found that he had indeed fashioned a powerful weapon out of $30 worth of parts.

"He took the Super Soaker apart, was able to fashion a barrel to where he was able to make what's considered a zip gun, where you can fire one round through it. In this case it was a 20-gauge shotgun shell," Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson told the station.

A school psychologist in New Orleans is under fire for posting racially inflammatory comments online amid a debate about the school system's treatment of black and special education students.

The Jefferson Parish school system is investigating Mark Traina after some of his postings -- including “Young Black Thugs who won’t follow the law need to be put down not incarcerated. Put down like the Dogs they are!” -- were highlighted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

Traina's comments - including “Serpas should be warning people to STAY THE HELL OUT OF NEW ORLEANS! These Black Dudes will Kill You!” - were posted on hisTwitter feed and on the NOLA.com Website. In an April Tweet, he wrote that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's killer George Zimmerman was "the real victim and held his ground."

The civil rights group complained to the U.S. Department of Education about Traina's comments the day after filing a federal complaint against the Jefferson Parish Public Schools for alleged discrimination against black students, reports WWL-TV. The SPLC claims that black students are disproportionately referred to alternative schools for minor cases of misconduct such as disrespectful behavior and use of profanity. Though they make up less than half of the student body, black students make up 78 percent of the referrals.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

A nude woman who calmly walked into two New York businesses this week shocked employees and attracted the gaze of more than one startled shopper.

Temperatures may have only been in the 60s in Saratoga Springs on Tuesday, but that did not stop 49-year-old Barbara Lafleur from stripping down to her birthday suit while she went shopping along Route 67, authorities said.

Lafleur's first stop was Curtis Lumber, where surveillance cameras captured her strolling casually through the store. Contacted by HuffPost Friday, store manager Bob Eakin said he was no longer allowed to comment on the incident. In an earlier interview with the Times Union, Eakin said Lafleur asked a couple of employees what time it was, told them to "Have a good day," and then walked out.

A Washington state man fed up with a group of noisy moviegoers behind him stepped over the seat and punched a 10-year-old boy in the face.

The man, who told police he thought the person he hit was a grown man, was watching "Titanic" in 3-D with his girlfriend and had asked the people sitting behind to quiet down and stop throwing popcorn, but they laughed at him, he said.

"I got so mad that it just happened," Yong Hyun Kim, 21, told police who arrested him the night of April 11 at the AMC Kent Station 14, in Kent, a south Seattle suburb.

The 10-year-old lost a tooth and had a bloody nose in the confrontation.

Kim spent a night in the Kent city jail and appeared April 12 in King County District Court and was released, said county prosecutor's spokesman Dan Donohoe.

Kim was charged May 16 with second-degree assault. If convicted, he could be sentenced to three to nine months in jail, Donohoe said Tuesday.

A South Carolina woman was arrested for child neglect last week after Spartanburg County Sheriff's deputies discovered her naked 2-year-old son asleep in a pile of trash on the floor of her car, WYFF-TV reports.

The woman, 36-year-old Shana Bishop, pulled into a stranger's driveway and began dancing around. A witnesses said that a cup holder from the car was stuck in Bishop's hair.

A resident called authorities, who questioned Bishop. A Spartanburg Country Sheriff's deputy said that the woman thought she was at her mother-in-law's house, appeared to be under the influence of narcotics and admitted to prior use of methamphetamine.

Corrections officers at the only women's prison in Alabama regularly sexually harass, abuse and even rape female inmates with few consequences, according to a new report by a civil rights organization.

Numerous female inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., reported becoming pregnant after being raped by male correctional staff over the past five years, said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which investigated the allegations. Other sexual misconduct, including pervasive harassment, unwanted touching and invasion of privacy, is commonplace, Stevenson said.

Consensual sex between staff and inmates is strictly forbidden by prison regulations, but is also a regular occurrence, with staff requiring women to perform sexual favors in exchange for smuggled contraband goods, the report found.

Kim Thomas, the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, said the agency was aware of the allegations. "This is a matter of grave concern to me," Thomas said in a statement. "Sexual misconduct of any kind, including custodial sexual misconduct, is not tolerated by this department."

Thomas did not address any of the specific allegations in the EJI report. The report's findings include allegations that inmates who reported sexual abuse by guards to senior corrections staff, including the warden, Frank Albright, say they were placed in solitary confinement, lost privileges and were subjected to verbal abuse.

"Many of them reported encounters with the warden that they characterize as abusive, threatening and intimidating," Stevenson said. "The women report that when you complain, you are placed in segregation and are subjected to very aggressive treatment by investigators and other staff. It is not an environment that encourages people to come forward with instances of abuse."

In a recent episode of his podcast "Penn's Sunday School," comedian Penn Jillette laid his opinions on the Obama drug policies out on the table.

Jillette, who has never done drugs or drank alcohol in his life, expressed particular concern over the policies' broad-sweeping, all-inclusive nature. Namely, that people are going to prison because of marijuana use.

"Now, he has not left this to states' rights," Jillette posited. "As you know, medical marijuana... you can get in California, and the feds are coming in to try to stop this. States' rights don't mean jack sh*t to the Obama administration on anything except gay marriage."

Another point of contention for Jillette was the fact that President Obama mentionedthat he had smoked "weed" and done "maybe a little blow" in his 1995 book "Dreams from my Father."

More than 2,000 inmates and ex-cons have been exonerated since 1989, according to the database that aims to track all wrongful convictions in the United States. More than 100 had been sentenced to death.

"This is a beginning," said University of Michigan Law School professor Samuel Gross, one of the database's creators. "One of my great hopes is that this will lead us to learn more about exonerations."

The database, which was developed with members of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Conviction, focused on 873 individual cases. The researchers also identified 13 major police scandals that falsely netted 1,170 other people, although these are not included in the database because they are the results of a collective exoneration based on problems in individual agencies.

Among the findings by the database researchers:

Perjury and false accusations are the most common causes of a bogus conviction, accounting for 51 percent of the cases included in the database;

Men make up 93 percent of the exonerated defendants;

African Americans represent 50 percent of the names on the database; whites make up 38 percent. Latinos account for 11 percent, and Native Americans and Asians make up 2 percent;

The most common crime on the list is murder, representing 48 percent of the exonerations. Sexual assaults are the second most common at 35 percent. There's a steep drop-off to other crimes, with robberies equaling 5 percent, while drug, white collar and non-violent crimes amount to 7 percent;

There have been 101 death-row inmates freed.

"The most important goal of the [criminal justice] system is accuracy," Gross told HuffPost. "Getting the right person and not getting the wrong person are obviously the most important goals. The only way to get those are to learn how we made our mistakes."

One reason Gross and his colleagues believe they're just scratching the surface there are geographical clusters that they found, like Chicago's Cook County -- which leads the country with 78 exonerations. There are other densely populated counties, like Fairfax, Va., that don't have any exonerations.

Areas with high numbers of freed men and women aren't necessarily more prone to police misconduct or overzealous prosecutors, Gross said. "I'm very sympathetic to police officers," he said. "They're overworked and they're right most of the time. But most of the time is not all the time."

Often the work of an aggressive organization like the Northern California Innocence Project in Santa Clara County, which the database shows has had 10 exonerations, can be behind the cases. Nearby Alameda County, where there is no such organization, has no exonerations, Gross said.

A high number of exonerations in certain states also might mean that legal watch groups there are more active and effective.